16:26,

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Chairman of the Armenian parliamentary standing committee on state-legal affairs Vladimir Vardanyan says he doesn’t see enough conditions now for abolishing the martial law in Armenia and proposed the opposition colleagues to work jointly on this direction for creating respective legal mechanisms.

“The martial law cannot remain in force forever and should not be. The martial law is just a regime to ensure and consolidate the country’s self-defense system. And it should be lifted when all sufficient conditions exist. The martial law should be lifted if the circumstances allow and if it is possible. In this case, lifting the martial law without the necessary legal procedures is impermissible. We do not have the legal mechanisms which today can replace the martial law”, the MP said. “We need to understand that there is a certain degree of danger, there is an issue of borders, deployment of respective troops. All these issues should be taken into account”.

The lawmaker proposed to create legal mechanisms for the lifting of the martial law. “It’s highly important for us to be able to create a legal base for passing from the martial law to normal conditions”, he said.

He said there is an important factor for the maintenance or cancellation of the martial law – the opinion of the General Staff and the military. “And that opinion is the following: in such situation there are no grounds to change it, there are no alternative measures, let’s work on this direction, let’s change the regime of the martial law”, he said.

Reporting by Anna Grigoryan; Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan